Movies - The Actress with a Thousand Faces

Tilda Swinton’s ‘92 breakout, “Orlando,” was a fascinating film. In it, the androgynous-seeming actress plays an immortal who changes sex in her various incarnations. It’s not a part too many actors could’ve done. But Ms. Swinton, the daughter of a Lord and Lady, with the finest education, had developed a wonderful interest in the bizarre while studying acting, and we’ve benefited by seeing her morph into an amazing variety of sometimes unrecognizable parts.

I’ve just re-ordered three of her films, all excellent in their own right.

In Jim Jarmusch’s 2013 vampire movie, “Only Lovers Left Alive,” Tilda is Eve to Tom Hiddleston’s Adam. They’re like rock stars. In this film, Ms.Swinton is pale, as always, which fits her part perfectly as a creature of the night. She’s also, perhaps, most normal in her appearance, with her hair a bit longer than usual. She can be a cool beauty.

That same year, she had a crazy makeover as Mason, an evil bureaucrat in Joon-ho Bong’s “Snowpiercer,” a post-apocalyptic tale of class struggle on an endlessly-moving train that holds all that’s left of humanity. This is a very cool sci-fi film, also starring Chris Evans (“Captain America” in the Marvel-verse). See the photo below, or better yet, the movie itself. (Interestingly, her “Only Lovers…” co-star, Tom Hiddleston, also a Marvel-verse star - as Loki in the “Thor” and “Avengers” films - has a similar story in the just-released “High-Rise,” in which a tower apartment building stands in for the train from “Snowpiercer.”)

The next year, in 2014, she did it again in what’s perhaps my favorite movie of the decade so far, Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”  The part is tiny (she’s killed off near the beginning, which sets the plot in motion), but it’s a delight that she’s willing to be virtually unrecognizable as Madame D, an ancient matron of great wealth.

Ms. Swinton’s courage to be vulnerable and/or unlikable was also evident in ‘07’s “Michael Clayton,” in which she portrays an ethically empty corporate attorney opposite George Clooney in Tony Gilroy’s Oscar-winning thriller, another movie not to be missed. Her turn as nasty rival twin Hollywood gossip columnists in “Hail, Caesar!” earlier this year was yet another delight!

This list could go on and on. I’ll see anything Ms. Swinton does.

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